Well, the Tusk has returned from two weeks in the land of the Pharaohs and enjoyed the most physically exhausting and intellectually fulfilling experience of my lifetime. I joined the hosts, Ben of UnchartedX and Jimmy of Bright Insight, and 27 new friends for what I believe is one of the great modern tours of Egypt.
We had extraordinary access to all the wonders of this timeless nation and were welcomed by everyone, everywhere, under extraordinary circumstances.
As a fortuitous result of the major relaxation in site access in late 2019, the Covid hysteria of 2020 — and excellent planning by the Khemit School and our superb guide Yousef Awyan— we had Egypt to ourselves. As confirmed, we were the only active tour bus in the country. At multiple world heritage sites, I saw one other bus, once, with five passengers from Abu Dhabi.
We pulled up to every site, walked immediately through turnstiles and security, and were the only tourists. Including for hours and hours at the Giza Plateau.
We felt safe and were safe. In a well appreciated effort, but perhaps a bit of overkill, we were followed and protected by expert local police and national security at all times. Once by 20 guns and a 50-caliber.
Hundreds of hours of fascinating video and photographs were obtained by the participants with extraordinary access to hardly seen and never documented ancient ruins. For instance, we are the only tour we know of with modern and extensive video of the interior of the Bent Pyramid of Dashur, closed since 1950. This cutting-edge content from all manner of devices is fortunately now in the hands of some of the most creative and well-informed science communicators on the planet.
Readers probably don’t recall, but the Tusk enjoyed somewhat similar expeditions in 2015 and 2016 as a dig volunteer for the Tall El-Hammam project in the Jordan Valley. Despite participating in the discovery of the largest forgotten city of the Levant, and determining its demise was the result of a cosmic impact, for some reason I posted very little of the trip here on the Tusk. Mostly just some poorly explained photos. It was all just too much to post. I was left kinda speechless by the trip. Me! And to some degree, I was concerned our discoveries might make it into the journals and my posts might be premature.
Despite being stuck to my knitting, for better or worse, alternative ancient histories do inform this blog. So I will try to do a better job with speculative Egypt. It certainly deserves it. But I am not planning to begin an extensive post history concerning advanced precursor civilizations, unappreciated ancient technologies or alternative Egyptian history. I’ll do some, but that class of investigation receives incredibly good treatment without my assistance, by everyone from Graham Hancock, to Ben and Jimmy — who are also among the first tier of science communicators on the planet regarding the Younger Dryas Impact Event.
It is hopefully the Tusk’s place to keep those folks up on the latest developments on the hard YDIE science, and sit back and enjoy their speculative productions, which I will certainly post. I look forward to that task more than ever as informed by this wonderful adventure, with extraordinary people, to stupefying places — subject to cataclysm.
Here is my first cut at culling over 3000 photos.
Some of the gang are already creating content. Much more to come!
— UnchartedX (@UnchartedX1) December 22, 2020
